


Rain Will Pour

by orphan_account



Series: Morty Falls [1]
Category: Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty
Genre: Adoption, Gen, I REGRET NOTHING, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 12:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4877626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Rick Sanchez,” the man says, extending a bony hand. “I’m Beth Smith’s father. Where is she?”</p><p>Stanley shakes his hand. “I’m Stan Pines. And I’m sorry, but Morty and his sister are orphaned.”</p><p>(or, the au where stan adopts morty and things are, for better or for worse, different)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain Will Pour

**Author's Note:**

> update (2/11/15): morty falls 2: the sequel: stanford strikes back in currently in the works! it will hopefully keep similar warnings, but any changes will be noted in the tags as basic human decency! :D

  **1**

 

The kid came to the gift shop sometimes. Soos tried to help him, but the little boy wouldn’t talk. He just looked at the clothing selections and fake displays. He always left without buying anything, which was pretty rude for a six-year-old.

When the lady who runs the foster home out of town arrives and starts asking desperately if he’s seen a short boy with brown hair and a yellow t-shirt, Stan realises that maybe the kid needs more than a few shelves of merchandise to look at every couple of weeks.

 

 

**2**

 

When the boy arrives again a month later, Stan talks to him.

“So, you’re Morty?” he asks. “I’m Stan.”

Morty looks up at Stan with wide eyes. “How d-did you know my name, Mr. Stan?”

Stanley kneels down. “I’m a man of mystery, kid. But your caretaker was very worried about you last time. You need to talk to her about where you’re going.”

“M-M-Mrs. Carlson doesn’t w-want me to go out of the house except for school, though,” Morty says. “An-and all the other kids don’t like me and they call me names and I just w-want somewhere where they c-c-can’t find me.”

And Stanley has made a huge mistake, because the next thing he knows, he’s applying for adoption papers.

When the boy arrives on his doorstep with a tiny suitcase and a worn stuffed bear, Stan feels no regrets.

 

 

**3**

 

Morty meets Summer a week later, when he starts attending school again. He’s moved to Gravity Falls Elementary School, entering in the middle of first grade. He’s a bit younger than the other kids, but if he’s not smart, Stan can teach him how to throw a decent punch. Nobody’s going to mess with his kid.

But Stanley discovers that a third grade kid has taken his little Morty under her wing, along with her adopted sister. Wendy and Summer Corduroy are apparently strong enough to lift a person twice their size together, which Stanley would expect from Manly Dan’s offspring.

Morty sits on the arm of Stan’s chair with a plastic cup of milk and Joe the Bear with his grubby honey fur and talks about how Summer and Wendy don’t laugh when he stutters and listen to him, no matter how long it takes him to finish his sentences. He asks if he has any real sisters, and Stan promises to ask Mrs. Carlson, but it doesn’t matter because if Summer and Wendy are his friends, they won’t mind if they are related to him by blood or not, because family is who you choose to love.

Stan holds Morty close to his barrel chest and smiles. This boy is his family now, and the feeling is liberating.

 

 

**4**

 

There is a sharp knock on the door after Stan and Morty finish breakfast. Morty grasps Joe the Bear’s torso to his chest and Stan ruffles his fluffy brown hair.

“Don’t worry, Morty, I’ll answer it,” he says, smiling gently. “Finish your pancakes.”

Morty nods and places Joe back on the chair next to him. His pancakes have a ridiculous amount of jam. Stan can’t say no to that tiny face. He walks to the front door quickly, anxious to return to his kid. He opens it to find a blue-haired man with a unibrow and alcohol on his breath.

“Who’re you?” Stan says shortly, arms folded and leaning against the doorframe.

“Where’s Morty?” the man on his porch says at the same time.

Stan glares at him. “Who are you and what do you want with my son?”

The man splutters. “Jerry? M-man, you’ve let yourself go.” He burps, and Stanley wrinkles his nose.

“Who the-“ Stan breathes through his nose for a second. “Who’s Jerry?”

“Je-Jerry, you know, Morty’s dad?” says the old man. “He fucked my daughter and got her pregnant twice. They had to get _married_.” His lip curls. “What do you have to do with Morty?”

“I’m,” Stan says, before taking a deep breath and instantly regretting it, because that old guy smells like something died. “He’s my son. I adopted him when his parents died. And let me repeat myself. _Who the hell are you_?”

“Rick Sanchez,” the man says, extending a bony hand. “I’m Beth Smith’s father. Where is she?”

Stanley shakes his hand. “I’m Stan Pines. And I’m sorry, but Morty and his sister are orphaned.”

 

 

**5**

 

Stanley has just finished a tour and is cleaning up. The Mystery Shack was going to be tidy and neat as hell when he was finished with it. It was really quite late for a Sunday night but the tour group had been large and in all honesty he could probably afford a vacation for Morty. The kid’s ridiculously obsessed with Lego and if Stan is perfectly honest, he just wants to see the kid’s face light up when he sees himself surrounded by blocky dinosaurs.

He tiptoes to Morty’s bedroom; just down the hall from his own. The boy has the best room with constellation maps on the ceiling, plastic dinosaurs and tiny tin cars on the shelves, and carefully painted walls in a calming shade of green.

Morty isn’t in his small bed.

“Kid?” Stan says gruffly, raising his voice a little. “Kid, why aren’t you in bed?”

His words fall flat in the empty room.

“Morty?” he calls down the hall.

No response.

“Morty? Morty? Where are you?”

He can’t breathe; he’s failed his son. Morty has disappeared with the man who claimed to be his grandfather, who claimed to care for them both despite his obvious flaws. Now he is alone again and Morty is who knows where.

He is sobbing by the time that he sees a green glow. He remembers a similar sight in blue and his eyes open wide to see Morty and Rick step out of the portal, Morty bouncing on his toes and Rick taking a swig from his flask.

“Go to your room,” Stan says, trying not to stare at Morty. Instead, he directs a glare at Rick that could possibly kill a man.

Morty still smiles; unaware of Stanley’s cold fury. “St-Stan! Rick showed me another univer-“

“Go to your room,” Stan repeats, and Morty scurries through the wooden door, left ajar and with a nameplate in the shape of a paw print, and Stan hopes that the kid won’t hear what’s coming next for his grandpa.

 

 

**6**

 

Stan grabs Rick by the collar of his lab coat and drags him to the gift shop, where Morty hopefully can’t hear them.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Stan hisses; his face inches from Rick’s. “Where the hell did you take him and why didn’t you tell me?”

“C’mon, St-tan,” Rick slurs. “We only went to ha-harvest some fruit that can cure the ca-co-common cold and Hepatitis B. Okay, so the natives wanted to eat our flesh, but-“

Stan drops the shorter, wirier man as his eyes narrow. “ _What_?”

Rick laughs. “I-I know, crazy, I mean, it’s not even a m-major part of their diet-“

He doesn’t say anymore, because Stan punches him in his bony face. “You put Morty in danger?”

With a snort, Rick replies, “Well, duh, you n-never let him do _anything_ fun. I mean, seriously, we could have just found that shit in the forest but you won’t let him go there.”

“Do you _know_ what’s in there?” Stan shouts. He takes a calming breath before speaking again in a lower tone. “What’s in the forest drove my brother crazy. I’m not going to risk losing Morty to this town.”

Rick watches Stan, who has his eyes closed but his fingers curled around Rick’s throat. “You, you know, I... I care about Morty too. D-don’t let any of the other Ricks know ‘bout that, though. Ricks, Ricks aren’t supposed to care for Mortys; w-we’re meant to use them as human cloaking devices so we don’t get followed by our enemies. M-Morty brainwaves cancel out our own on most sc-scanners. An-and, well, I-I-I guess I’m too emotional to be a proper Rick, because I care about Morty.”

Stan’s fingers tighten, and Rick can’t breathe, but Stan opens his eyes and says, “Let me teach him how to defend himself. Let me teach him about Gravity Falls. Then you can take him with you. Until then, you’d better help out with training him.”

 

 

**7**

 

The next biggest change comes with Dipper and Mabel, who arrive a week after their parents phone Stanley to see if he can take them in for the summer and Stan shrugs and begins to clear out the attic.

They don’t seem too excited and are rather nervy around Morty. They are even jumpier around Rick, who has probably killed countless beings and runs his scrap metal spaceship on the power generated by a small universe. Stan tries to be a responsible, grounding influence, but it’s been so long since he hasn’t been entirely responsible for the raising of children that he pulls a ridiculous amount of pranks on them.

Of course, Rick takes Morty out on their ridiculous adventures, occasionally taking Summer and leaving Stan with only two employees at the Mystery Shack that he has to pay. Of course, he still needs extra hands, so he ropes the twins in as often as possible. This means that they occasionally go missing during the day; possibly to the forest.

Good thing they stole some kind of weird science gun from Rick, who shrugged and made a new one.

Sometimes they stop talking about things when Stan enters the room. Stan doesn’t really mind, but damn, he didn’t think that laughing at the kids would make them mistrust him. It was just fun, right?

 

 

**8**

 

“Dipper and Mabel don’t trust you,” Morty says one evening when they’re watching one of the weird shows that pop up on their cable out of nowhere sometimes. It’s about a nihilistic potato. Rick may be responsible for it.

Stan looks away from the potato ruminating on the uselessness of existence. “Huh?”

Morty shrugs and shifts in his chair. “Well, they’re kind of scared of you, so they avoid you a lot. I heard them talking to Wendy about that, and she said that you weren’t that scary, just a little gruff and weird. Also, they’re going on adventures and looking for monsters. They take Soos with them sometimes.”

“What?” he says, because are his great-niece and nephew willingly putting themselves in danger for the sake of the supernatural? Dumb question, obvious answer: yes.

“I think that they want you to pay more attention to them,” Morty shrugs. “I’ve been trying, but they’re scared of me, I think. It probably has something to do with Rick. But seriously, they’re pretty cool. They saved Wendy and Summer’s friends from those ghosts at the convenience store one time.”

With a nod, Stan goes back to watching the potato, which is still crying about its life choices and the lack of impact it will have on the world. The gears in his mind are whirring, though, and Morty smiles, satisfied.

And if he stomps up to the kids’ attic bedroom and gives Mabel a grappling hook and Dipper a blue pine tree hat to replace his lost star, then nobody has to know.

(Morty knows immediately in the morning as Mabel starts hanging from the ceiling and Dipper isn’t checking to see if his hair covers his forehead anymore.)

 

 

**9**

 

Stan watches his kids play.

It’s been a week and now Morty has been fully accepted by the twins. He laughs and follows them into the forest, holding a tiny gun that Rick built at the kitchen table during dinner. The sound of their voices chanting “ _Pines! Pines! Pines!”_ fades into the distance as he and Rick watch from the porch.

“Tha-that explains why Morty hasn’t been w-wanting to go on as many adventures,” Rick says, swigging from his flask.

Stan shrugs. “He’s making friends his age. I’m proud of him.” A noise that sounds like Morty’s gun followed by a Gremoblin’s roar breaks the silence. “And he’s learning to take care of himself. To be honest, I’m proud of all three of them.”

“They’re h-hunting and possibly killing rare mag-gical creatures,” Rick says. “Damn right I’m fucking proud.”

Rick’s cell phone vibrates. He picks it up lazily and takes the call. “What the fuck, Morty, nobody uses the call function on phones anymore.” He raises an eyebrow and says, “Stan, Mabel wants to talk to you.”

“What is it, sweetie?” he asks, expecting to hear about an injury. Instead, his eyes widen and he says, “Wow, I never knew Dipper had it in him. Tell him to make some attractions for the Shack.”

“What is it?” Rick asks, taking his phone back after Stan has hung up.

“Dipper’s magic,” replies Stan. “Mabel isn’t as good at it, though. I’m going to ask her if she wants to learn to box.”

Rick nods absently. “You do that,” he says. “She might need something if she loses the gun she stole from me.”

 

 

**10**

 

When he loses the Shack, he crumbles.

There will be no more late nights staying up with Morty, Mabel, and Dipper watching Ducktective. Rick will no longer place highly dangerous creatures from other dimensions in the museum part of the Mystery Shack and let Stan explain it while surreptitiously trying to kill both the strange, possibly sentient creature and Rick. He will never successfully activate the portal and see Stanford again.

So… Fuck it. He’s going to deal with this problem the way Rick deals with his. After all, he reasons, it can’t be worse than knowing that he has nowhere and nothing to his name; the one that isn’t even his.

So Stan goes to Greasy’s, and he orders something to take the pain and the foul taste in his mouth away, and fuck, he can’t let the kids see him like this. Hitting rock bottom and not even caring anymore. He can see their expressions when he closes his eyes. Dipper, confused and sad; Mabel, scared and lonely; and Morty…

When the kid asked why Rick carried his flask around with him, and wat was in the bottles that Stan wouldn’t let him drink out of, Stan told him about alcoholism, and how some people use substances in order to stop themselves from being sad. He used words that Morty could understand at that point, because the kid’s education had been lousy and Joe the Bear still accompanied Morty whenever he left the house. But the general gist of the speech was that Rick had needed to get rid of his sadness and had used a method that hurt him more in the long run, with physical and psychological side effects. Stan was pretty sure that he had turned both of them off of alcohol then, but here he was. Drinking away his troubles and not even caring.

And at some point he hears a cry of “Mr. Pines!” and he’s not entirely sure where he is. Soft arms wrap around him and he’s being mostly supported by a familiar, clean scent. The hands are comforting and they’re soft too, like the flesh of innocent babies.

That is an analogy Stan should have never made.

“Soos?” he mumbles. His handyman is always there, even though there’s no longer any need for Soos’s loyalty anymore. Just like how there is no longer any need for Stan.

“It’s me, Mr. Pines,” says Soos, his voice warm and worried. “Don’t worry, I’m gonna get you home.”

Stan shakes his head weakly. “Gideon won. T-thirty years an-and I was beaten by a-a-a nine year old. What the fuck? I do… I don’t h-have a home anymore. I’m back at the start. I-it’s okay, Soos, I can… I can li-live out of the old Stanley Mobile a-again!”

Soos just shushes him and continues to carry Stan home.

 

 

**11**

 

The kids won.

The kids won his home back.

Stan can’t breathe properly but he is hugging his great-niblings as tightly as he can and they’re returning it with just as much power and Morty is watching him with Rick. But Dipper punched out a small child for hurting his sister and Mabel saved both of their lives and they did it for him and Morty and Rick. Mabel pulls the other two members of their family into the hug, despite Rick’s complaints, because he has been forced to indulge the twins on pain of death from Stan.

“Ju-just because you can use tha-that thing now, d-don’t think you can grab people with it still!” Morty grins at Mabel.

Mabel scowls playfully. “I can grab anything I want with it! “Watch!”

She aims it at Morty’s chest, but Dipper lowers her hand.

“Mabel,” her brother says. “Mabel, no.”

 

 

**12**

 

Repairs to the shack take a while, and Mabel spends most of it attached to her pig while Rick spends most of it attached to his flask while Dipper spends most of it attached to Wendy but somehow, they manage to get the whole thing fixed. The giant ‘S’ still fell from the sign, though, and after a while, Stan gets bored of watching Morty and Dipper get frustrated while trying to properly affix it to the roof. Gompers tries to eat it, but Mabel fights the goat for her right to paint it with glitter.

Seriously. She punches the goat in the face. Rick is a bad influence on her.

Then again, she’s definitely still Mabel, because immediately afterwards, she apologises.

Dipper flops down on the dinosaur skull next to Stan after a while, a Pitt Cola in hand. Mabel follows, clambering into his lap, and Morty sits on his beanbag in front of the skull. They sit in silence for a few moments, until Dipper finally speaks up.

“So I found this book in the woods a while back when you sent me out to hang up signs,” he says. “It’s all about the supernatural stuff in Gravity Falls and we’ve been keeping it a secret but we talked about it and we think you should know about it.”

Mabel frowns at Dipper. “You mean _you’re_ telling him _now_? I wanted to tell Grunkle Stan about the journals!”

Stan blinks, trying not to let the fact that his heart was beating a hundred miles a minute show. “J-journals?” he says.

Dipper pulls out the dark red book from his vest, and there’s Stanford Pines’s golden handprint on the front, with a huge ‘3’ emblazoned on it, and Stan can’t breathe.

“We’ve had this for a while, but we didn’t show it to you because, well, I was scared,” Morty says.

Stan bites his tongue. Now is not the time to be apologising for making Morty feel as though he couldn’t trust his father.

Mabel nods. “It has all of the weird stuff that happens in Gravity Falls in there. Some mysterious author wrote it ages ago.”

Stan doesn’t say that he knows who the author is. How old the book is. How he spent thirty years finding that damned book.

He takes it though, under some flimsy excuse that he couldn’t remember.

 

 

 

“Still haven’t told them?” Rick asks a couple of nights later.

Stan shakes his head and punches in the vending machine code.

 

 

**13**

 

His work on the portal was only stopped when he heard a loud clattering noise in the gift shop. Rick’s grating voice was muffled through all of the floors, but Stan couldn’t focus and his hands were shaking with what could be excitement, anxiety, or both.

“C’mon, Morty, Summer, we, we need to get to-“ A clattering noise. “What the _fuck_?”

“R-Rick, what are those?”

“They’re fucking zombies, Morty. They can, they can bite you, an-and turn you into one, or they’re gonna eat your brains, M-Morty, they’ll eat your brains and you’ll be dead. Either way, it’s bad news, Morty.”

“Holy fuck, Rick, w-why didn’t you just s-say that they’re z-zombies?”

"What am I supposed to do with these crystals, though? Will they help stop the zombies?"

“Just fucking _run_ , you little shits! Get into the fucking portal!”

“But Dipper, and Mabel, and Soos-“

“There’s n-no fucking _time_!”

Dipper. Mabel. Soos. _Shit_.

He doesn’t even know if he has his brass knuckles or baseball bat with him, but the elevator cannot go fast enough. He lunges out of the door as soon as he could and swung and there’s his bat and an undead monster slumps to the ground in front of him, coating him in green ooze. And another. And another. And another.

“Dipper! Mabel!” he yells.

“Grunkle Stan!” he hears, and it is a desperate noise, and fuck.

He makes his way to the kids, fighting off monsters every step of the way, but then Mabel screams and Stan doesn’t think about how he can tell the difference between the two kids that he only met this summer by their sounds of terror.

“Mabel, I’m sorry!”

“Dipper!” he screams, and he hears Mabel yell it too, and his mind goes blank with the only instruction consuming his entire self being _protect the kids protect the kids protect the kids_ -

That zombie never stood a chance.

“Run, kids!” he shouts.

Dipper stares, wide eyed. “But Grun-“

“ _Now_!”

They don’t hesitate, and Mabel clutches Waddles in her arms as if the pig will somehow save her.

And they know without a doubt now that Stan has been lying to them, and he can only hope that they understand that everything he does now, it’s for his three kids that he adores more than life itself.

 

 

**14**

 

Old Man McGucket is in his kitchen eating raw chicken nuggets and, to be honest, Stan is not surprised.

“Kids?” he shouts, making the kook jump and drop a nugget before eating it off the floor. “Why is McGucket in the kitchen?”

“I-it’s kind of a long story,” Morty says as he walks through the door and turns the coffee machine on. “Dipper found some things in the Journal and he thought Mc-McGucket wrote them, but it turns out he was an assistant? We also disassembled a cult and acquired d-dangerous weapons.”

Stan frowns. “Didn’t I tell you three to stop looking for danger? I don’t want any of you getting hurt on my watch. I don’t want to clean up for CPS more than I have to.”

Morty raises an eyebrow. “Stan, I-I go on adventures with Rick all the time. Cut the twins some slack, won’t you?”

“That’s not the point!” Stan says, gesturing with his hands. “I knew that Rick would take you on adventures anyway, and I wanted to make sure that you knew how to defend yourself properly before you started gallivanting across the multiverse, stealing sh-stuff and starting global wars. But the twins are… They’re…”

“They’re what?” Morty’s voice quivers. “Is it because they’re too young? The-they’re about as old as I was when I started going on adventures with Rick, s-so you can’t say that. Are they too weak? A-are hospital stays too expensive? Because Dipper got, he had to go to hospital after the puppet thing, and you didn’t pay anything. And they can’t, you know, they won’t die because they can defend themselves, and they’ve done so many dangerous things that, I mean, they took down a cult! And they didn’t get hurt! We protect them, me and Wendy and Soos. And Rick does, sometimes, when he’s not, you know, drunk or whatever. And you punched out that pterodactyl once for Waddles. Y-y’know, Stan, why don’t you just tell me?”

Stan wipes his forehead with the ball of his hand. “Morty, you’ve got to understand. I love you, but the twins…”

Morty stares at Stan’s nervous face, hears the affirmations of emotions that they hardly ever vocalise, and he understands. “Y-y-you care about them more than me, don’t you?”

“What the f-“ Stan shakes his head in disbelief. “What the heck, Morty? How could you think that? Morty, I… You’re my _son_ , Morty!”

“Then say it!” the kid says with a wobbling lip. “Tell me that you care about us all equally!”

Stan opens his mouth, a trace of reluctance in his eyes, when Mabel bursts into the kitchen while holding scissors, knitting needles, eight balls of yarn, and a Dipper.

Stan doesn’t ask, and leaves the room.

 

 

**15**

 

And then he’s holding onto a steel beam and begging for Mabel to trust him, because she has the power to set right Stan’s greatest mistake and she has no idea of the fact that she could crush every hope that Stan has with a single simple movement.

“Please, Mabel, trust me! I wouldn’t do anything that could hurt you three!”

“Mabel, we hardly know him! He’s been lying to us all summer!”

But then Morty speaks up, quiet but clearly audible to everyone in the room.

“Mabel, p-push the button. I-I-I don’t, I don’t even know who Stan is anymore.”

And Stan feels sick, because he should have told them all ages ago and now her tiny hand is lowering so close to the red button.

“It’s for my brother!” he yells, and everyone freezes.

A quiet “ _Called it!_ ” comes from Soos’s corner of the room.

He continues as though Soos hadn’t spoken. “My brother’s on the other side of that portal. He’s the real Stanford Pines. He built this portal, he wrote the journals, and he was my best friend until I messed everything up! Please, just… I just need him back.”

Mabel looks into his eyes for the longest moment, and she lets go of the button.

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so i know i promised to write more about stacey and saffron, but i kind of got distracted? this au started in a game of cards against humanity along with a few others. but i kind of fell fast and hard for this version of stan, which is kind of why this is all from his pov. i'll probably have to write more on this because there is so much plot missing due to the ending point and perspective, but let me tell you. this gets angsty as fuck
> 
> (just kidding, it's fluff all the way)


End file.
